I think writing books is a way for me to work out certain issues. I write about what matters to me, always.

I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.

Words were different when they lived inside of you.

If you want to be a writer, you don't want to live in a comfortable place.

I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.

I think writing books is a way for me to work out certain issues. I write about what matters to me, always.

It's a complex thing when you're writing a novel, because so much of it is conscious and planned and deliberate, and so much of it is not, and it has to be a dance between the conscious and the unconscious. I bring my best instincts to my work. For instance - and I come by this naturally, or I think I do - I am a very good judge of character.